Sales and Marketing Performance Blog

Convert Inbound Lead Generation into Better Sales Performance

Using Inbound Marketing to realize the full potential of your sales team

White Paper Executive Summary

Anyone who has been part of a Business-to-Business (B2B) technology sales team will be familiar with some of the typical excuses given when we are not hitting our numbers:

• We’re not getting enough leads
• Marketing doesn’t understand our customers
• The leads that marketing delivered were not properly qualified
• Most of the leads I call don’t want to talk to me
• They were interested but had already chosen another solution

These issues can be particularly vexing for vendors selling discontinuous or disruptive technology to early adopters. 

This revised and updated white paper is for sales and marketing leaders interested in improving their lead-generation capability and converting more leads into customers as they pursue the early market. In it, we explain why traditional lead development methods no longer apply to selling in today’s markets – and describe a solution that helps organizations improve lead generation and conversions.

This paper has been revised and updated as of August 2010.

Click on the white paper image for an instant download.

Resources for Creating Engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations

In May this year I posted an article entitled "A Guide to creating engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations"

This article attracted above average interest and I thought I would follow-up with a short list of high value resources and advice on Powerpoint content creation and delivery, to assist marketing and sales professionals in more effectively communicating value to customers. Please add to it if you have a link to great advice, consistent with the above goals.

Start by answering the buyers WIIFM question

Any successful sales conversation, whether a presentation, whiteboard session or cross table chat using a flip-chart, should start with an understanding of the most important question on the customers mind, "What's in it for me." If you need help answering this question, start by developing the buyer persona; if you are selling novel technology or attempting to influence mentors in the buying organization to initiate a sales opportunity, value identification could also be useful in answering this question.

Resources

1. Here is Seth Godin's original 2007 post Really Bad Powerpoint that spawned hundreds of follow-on articles and thousands of comments.
2. Check out Carmine Gallo's Youtube video, "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"
   
   
3. For a complete one-stop shop for Powerpoint resources including a free Ebook, visit Olivia Mitchell at Speaking about Presenting for presentation tips. See Olivia's well researched list of presentation skills books.
4. Most Powerpoint sales presentations fall short of achieving their sales objective...have you ever thought not doing a Powerpoint presentation? What are you actually trying to achieve in making the presentation in the first place? If your goal is customer engagement and active discussion on your ideas then maybe a white-board session could be more useful. Check out WhiteboardSelling.com for an education on how to engage and convince customers without using Powerpoint.
5. If you are not using a mind-mapping tool to help you think through and create your story, then you could be missing a trick. I have been using and recommend Mindjet MindManager since 2004 and you can get a free 30 day trial download here.
6. Learn more about the 4MAT system and how to get your message across so it sticks, by watching the introductory video on 4MAT concepts from the creator of 4MAT Dr. Bernice McCarthy. Note: this video is heavily slanted toward teaching school-kids, but the techniques apply to any discipline in getting ideas across and 4MAT works. Instead of asking students why they need to learn this, we need to answer the question our prospects are asking at the outset...why should I listen to this presentation?
7. We have met the enemy and he is Powerpoint, New York Times article of interest on US Army use of PowerPoint for briefings.
8. For a completely new approach to Internet based presentations, that does not include Powepoint, take a look at Prezi.
9. Finally, if you would like some help in creating clarity in your message and tuning your story to the buyers WIIFM antenna, regardless of the presenation medium, we would be pleased to discuss Value Identification and aligning messaging around buyer needs.

Value Creation and Differentiation—Sales, Marketing Achilles' Heel

Stan DeVaughn of Turner DeVaugh sent me a survey his firm conducted late last year in conjunction with Jigsaw for the CIO council entitled, “Vendor-CIO First Contact: Smarter Approaches for Vendors Seeking to Connect with CIOs”, which you can download by clicking on the link.

This is an enlightening, yet disturbing survey into the business development behavior of sales and marketing representatives from IT vendors and B2B software companies. It surveys more than 300 CIO’s about their experience with first contact from new vendors and suggests ways that corporations can better defend themselves from unwanted cold calls and SPAM.

The survey interviews 30 sales professionals to understand the problem from both sides and offers enlightened vendors suggestions on how to better engage their target market, and is worthwhile reading for every sales and marketing executive.

The chart in figure 3., excerpted from the report is worth pondering a few moments;

• Sales reps revert to the cold call and telemarketing to generate leads, (despite low conversion rates) in order to satisfy sales managers, who need to be seen to be driving lead generation – this does not serve either organization.
• Lack of preparation and lack of homework prior to a call is just plain unprofessional–period.
• Unsolicited emails are SPAM and are as unwanted and annoying as cold calling to CIO’s; IT executives are actively encouraged to use permission-based SPAM filters.
• Emails and voicemails with no clear value proposition–from the clients perspective, rank in the top 5 DON’T DO list.

We’re in Q3 2010, yet many IT vendors doggedly persist in 1980’s cold calling and poorly targeted email techniques, despite the miniscule success rates in vain the hope of connecting with IT buyers. 

“When we want or need a product like yours, we will find you” - is the CIO mantra that sales and marketers need to heed and understand; IT executives are not waiting for your call or your SPAMMY email.

The right approach to engage IT executives is made clear for vendors in figure 9:

1. Vendors wanting to make first-time contact with CIO’s should do their homework prior to making an approach; leading with an opinion on value-creation, specific to the company and relevant to the industry.
2. They should seek to connect through referrals from trusted acquaintances and social network introductions with a clear and relevant value proposition,
3. They should also be prepared to include rather than circumvent the executive administrator (gatekeeper) in the process of calling IT executives,
4. They should be prepared to use current technology to reach buyers on a permission basis and track click-through rates to measure buyer interest,
5. Vendors should be prepared to use vendor portals and to communicate with a clear and relevant value proposition, coupled relevant proof points.

Conclusion and Call to Action

If the activities of your sales and marketing team rank high on the CIO annoyance scale in chart 3 or if they struggle to communicate value and differentiate offerings as in figure 9., then more of the same Outbound Marketing techniques are not going to help.

We believe the top priorities for IT vendors to help CIO’s and IT executives to find you on the Internet, understand your offerings and interact with your sales and marketing team are as follows;

1. Value Identification and Messaging Alignment

• Develop messaging that identifies the buyer persona and value creation and enables the vendor sales and marketing organizations to align around how products are used by IT to create value and use it across all touch points in the organization,
• Help the sales team understand industry issues and convey product usage in the context of achieving buyer goals and solving IT problems and integrate relevant proof points in Buyer Relevant Messaging templates

2. Adopt an Inbound Marketing
 model

Use the output of the Messaging Workshop to drive Website messaging and Inbound Marketing process to help you

• Get found on the Internet by IT executives looking for products with similar capabilities,
• Convert those visitors into leads through using compelling offers and landing pages and
• Analyze performance and make changes in a closed-loop system to accurately measure marketing cost per lead and cost per customer and integrate sales and marketing process for better sales performance.

We recommend, resell and implement the Hubspot Inbound Marketing System which has produced on average a 450% increase in leads in the first 5 months of usage for the 3000 HubSpot customers.

Connect with us to discuss whether the Value Identification and Messaging Alignment process and an Inbound Marketing model is right for your business.

Not a Sales Blog: The 150th British Open and our Last in St Andrews

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the British Open golf tournament and our last Open as residents of St Andrews. This is not my normal technology sales and marketing related blog, but a fond memoir to a great 7 years living in a unique and interesting place and you may find it of interest.

The Old Course, all set for the 2010 Open

We moved to St Andrews from Silicon Valley in 2003 and have made it our base for our consulting business, serving clients in the technology business in the USA, UK, Europe, Scandinavia and Israel.

St Andrews is home to the oldest University in Scotland and the third oldest University in the English-speaking World, founded in 1443. The combination of the University, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) and the constant stream of international golfing visitors make St Andrews a lively and interesting place full of characters and home to 15,000 people.

St Andrews Cathedral

St Andrews has long been of significant religious importance, being a place of worship since the 8th century AD when the relics of St Andrews were bought here to the site now occupied by the cathedral, commenced in 1160 and home of the medieval Scottish Church (now a ruin).

"You don't come to St Andrews for the weather" it is said, although overall the weather is mild and in winter the courses are generally playable and in superb condition all year round; this year the links were closed for a month because of snow in what was the most severe winter in recent memory.

On the subject of golf, there is no finer collection of courses anywhere on the planet as inexpensive, accessible and interesting as St Andrews. As a resident of the town, for a mere UK 150 pounds, you can buy a Links Ticket which entitles you to play all seven of the public links courses all year round, as often as you would like.

The 18th at Kingsbarns, a death or glory finish

In addition, through an arrangement with the R&A, resident Links Ticket holders gain access to the superb Kingsbarns golf links just 5 miles away for a mere UK 25 pounds per round.

Other great and under-rated courses in the town are The Dukes Course, owned and operated by The Old Course Hotel, originally designed by Peter Thomson and recently modified by Pete Dye's team; an annual membership of this championship 7500 yard heathland layout, with magnificent views overlooking the town, costs UK 684 pounds. The Dukes is in my opinion the second most difficult course in Scotland, behind Carnoustie and a must-play when you come here.

Two other courses worth playing are the recently modified and significantly improved Torrance Course (home of the Scottish Senior Open) and the Kittoch's course at The Fairmont Hotel, both excellent and recommended, my favorite being the Torrance.

Loch Voil, The Trossachs National Park

The thing my family and I will miss the most after we leave here, apart from absent friends – are the beautiful Scottish Highlands. Still a wilderness in many parts, uncrowded and accessible in an hour or two from St Andrews. The best way to see The Highlands is on a bicycle or in a kayak or on foot, where the scenery changes slowly and you get an opportunity to immerse yourself in the landscape and breathe the clean, fragrant, moist, pine-laden air.

As for who will win The Open Championship this week, I don't know and the field this year is wide open, with any of the top 20 players in the World capable of it. I walked around a few holes on The Old with Justin Rose last week before official practice began and he is in form and hitting it beautifully.

While you are here a visit to The Central Bar in Market St. is recommended; Scotland's best kept secret isn't the Single Malt Whisky, or the golf, it's Scottish real ales and at The Central, they usually have 8 different real ales on tap and they know how to look after their beers.

Finally, if you do make it to Scotland, you MUST play Castle Stuart near Inverness; designed and built by the same team that created Kingsbarns, Castle Stuart will leave you richer for the experience of having played it and looking forward to playing it again.

We are returning to Silicon Valley in August for family reasons and look forward to our return visits to Scotland and St Andrews.

Becoming a Sales or Marketing Linchpin - A Book Review

I loved Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin, but Linchpin is not for everyone.  There is a certain percentage of the population that doesn't want change; hates the concept of personal development - especially when it comes to them, is not interested in new ideas and prefers to pretend like Candide in Voltaire's novel by the same name that - "all must really be for the best and that hard work, from day to day is what life is about."

Linchpin is a must read for anyone interested in improving the quality of their working life and is written in an accessible way that will appeal to a very broad audience.  Seth has written 12 books and his blog is the top rated blog from 150 marketing blogs rated by Advertising Age - if you haven't subscribed yet, you can do so here.

What I really like about this book is that it captures the essence of why change is needed in our society and it identifies what prevents most people from getting the success they crave (the resistance), and offers a formula for success for anyone wanting to create a remarkable future. The Old American Dream was:

• Keep your head down
• Follow Instructions
• Show up on time
• Work Hard
• Suck it up...and you will be rewarded.
  

As we've seen, that dream is over. Seth passionately advocates a move away from the factory model of education, where we teach compliance in our schools to produce workers who are no longer needed as "cogs in the machine", because the cogs are cheaper and more readily exploitable elsewhere.

The new American dream is this:

• Be remarkable
• Be generous
• Create art
• Make Judgement calls
• Connect people and ideas.

Seth would like schools to teach a new curriculum for contributors in the new American dream and the key elements are;

1.     Solve interesting problems

2.     Lead

Seth fuses core ideas from human needs psychology into the concept of the "Lizard Brain" or "The Resistance". The Lizard Brain is what keeps us alive, it's responsible for our fight/flight mechanism and is constantly seeking certainty, variety and significance. It's also the thing that holds us back, the thing that has us checking our email 50 times a day to see if anyone sent anything interesting to us, checking our blog traffic and commentary to see if anyone left any comments and said anything nice about us. 

The resistance is also what separates us from our destiny and it show's up as fear:  fear of the unknown, fear of making your own map for your life, fear of failure, fear because you or your ideas could be rejected. Fear shows up in many forms;– one that applies to a lot of us comes is the form of procrastination, which keeps us in the office for 10+ hours a day and leaving work not having achieved anything, but staying busy.

Seth asks, "If you just had just 5 hours to do meaningful work during the day instead of the 10-15 you currently spend, what would you do differently?"

Linchpins feel the fear, acknowledge it and proceed anyway–Seth doesn't tell you how to do this, because its personal and different for everyone, but it is what is needed in today's economy to make a difference.

A Linchpin in sales, makes every encounter with a customer or prospect "art", through giving 100% attention, and engaging through a genuine desire to help solve a problem through domain expertise and the ability to bring the weight of the organization to bear to solve the customer problem - if needed. Linchpins are the top 2-3% of achievers in every sales organization.

The essence of the linchpin, whether they are in sales, marketing, engineering or a volunteer in a non-profit is:-

1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization (using emotional labor, finesse and intuition- its not in the manual),
2. Delivering unique creativity  (meaning they contribute domain expertise, their passion and risk rejection to get the really important stuff done - They SHIP!),
3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity (there's no manual, you make it up to achieve a result from great complexity - you make your own map),
4. Leading Customers (sales and marketing leadership opportunities occur at every touch-point with a customer/consumer/donor,
5. Inspiring Staff (Linchpins make things happen vs being told what to do and inspire others to take initiative for themselves),
6. Providing deep domain knowledge (deep domain knowledge by itself is rarely sufficient to become indispensible - combining that knowledge with smart decisions and generous contributions changes things.)
7. Possessing a Unique Talent (this is one that will make many uncomfortable): if you don't have a unique talent - in the customers World, then the options are to develop the other attributes that make you a linchpin or get a lot better at your unique talent.

Linchpins are CEO's and entrepreneurs who have overcome the fear and are creating their own map, programmers who ship elegant code that works, volunteers with compassion who make a difference. What the World needs is more linchpins, we have an excess of cogs.

I've had the pleasure to work with a number of marketing linchpins in recent consulting engagements...Linchpins don't' talk about what they can do, they do it and they create very significant positive change. Arita Mattsoff at Magic Software is a Linchpin, Yossi Covo at SuperDerivatives is a Linchpin, Holly Allison at VICO Software is a Linchpin.

You too can be a Linchpin; you're not born a Linchpin, it's a choice and it's up to you. I recommend that you buy the book, if you are ready, you will read it many times as it calls to each of us to step up and be who we truly can be.

Aligning Sales Value and Expertise with The Four Buying Cultures

In the book Why Killer Products Don't Sell, authors, Dominic Rowsell and Ian Gotts state there are four different and distinct buying cultures, which vary based on the buyers tolerance for risk across the technology adoption lifecycle. Understanding the difference in the four buying cultures and optimizing the supply/value chain to service customers is often an after-thought, particulary for early-stage companies transitioning from start-up to company building. Indeed many large corporations have difficulty in introducing novel products through a salesforce that is accustomed to servicing customers in a mature market.

There is a big difference in the sales cycle length and complexity and sales skill level required to fulfil a value offered customer interaction vs differentiating value in a value-added sale or moving a client through a value-created selling process. Often early stage companies entering new markets hire sales-people with great resumes who sold in a value-added way to buyers in an established market, only to see them struggle for success when the buyer has no concept of the product being sold and needs to be led through a consultative process from start to finish.

I have added one further category not mentioned in Killer Products and that is the role of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is a step removed from the value captured sales professional in that they are taking the risk for themselves and they have the potential to create the most value for customers. Arguably they need more skill than top sales people to be successful...certainly more courage. Successful sales people share several traits with those of successful entrepreneurs. Click on the following link for an excellent recent article by Steve Blank on what makes real entrepreneurs.

In the following chart which examines the buying cultures and the value created for the customer vs skill required for the sales role, I have added income potential. The implication here is that in order to maximize income and growth potential as a sales professional, we need to change role and move up the value hierarchy and to do this we need to add skill and expertise.

Its no secret that the Internet has vastly transformed the buying process. The buyer has access to far more information about product (and pricing) on which to understand, assess and decide on technology purchases. The opportunity window for the salesperson has narrowed as a result and at the bottom of the value hierarchy sales-people are being replaced by transactional applications.

As a consultant and sales training professional, I have met thousands of sales people in my career. Many are in a state of happy equilibrium, where their skills and technique match the role requirements for their current position.

I have also met sales people who are brilliant at their current job and have outstanding skills, expertise and attitude who are in my opinion under-achieving their potential for income and personal growth.

Conversely, I have met sales people who are struggling to achieve quota and the standard required for effective performance in selling Internet Age buyers.

The question for salespeople is - are you under-achieving your potential, if so what are you going to do about it?

The question for the exec. team, given that there are four different buying cultures is - are you over-servicing or underservicing your clients?

 

 

Magic Software - Sales and Marketing Performance Case Study

 The Magic Software Case Study has been moved to Sales And Marketing Performance Improvement Case Studies

Qualification Confirmation - A Key Consultative Selling Process Tool

CSO Insights publishes an annual Sales Performance Optimization Survey (SPO) of Chief Sales Officers (CSO), which provides detailed information on several hundred sales and marketing performance metrics. These metrics serve as benchmarks for sales leaders to evaluate their own performance. In CSO Insights SPO 2010 sample of 2800  CSO's, there was an interesting chart on the outcomes of forecast deals.....nearly 1 in 4 deals was lost to no-decision with a further 30% lost to competition.

There is no doubt 2009 was an exceptionally difficult year, but I would not expect a massive reduction in either negative outcome in the near future...therefore anything we can do to reduce the impact of going the distance in a deal and ending in lost or no-decision outcome is worthwhile and an imperative for sales leaders.

As a sales consultant I am a reader of sales blogs and books for new ideas and insights and when I came across Mike Bosworth and John Hollands's book Customer Centric Selling in 2004, I read it with interest and recommend it as one of the best sales books I've read for B2B sales professionals.

There is one technique in the book that I have used and integrated into our strong qualification process that I think is very powerful in improving qualification and its called Qualification Confirmation and I recommend it.

The Meeting Summary Letter, or Qualification Confirmation as it is referred to in the book, is one of the most valuable process steps in the toolbag for sales professionals selling in the B2B technology space. 

Like many sales tools, this isn't rocket science, just better process. One small addition to my follow-up letters has made a huge difference forecasting and eliminated most deals, where a no-decision or loss is a likely outcome.

What the authors realised is that without getting the buyers confirmation of what you understood was discussed and agreed in the meeting and confirming buyer commitment to next steps, a deal is not qualified and effectively the sales person has no control without it.

Regardless of the qualification system you use, if you add this simple technique to your system, it will give you the evidence you need to know that buyer is engaged and interested in next steps. An interested buyer will confirm in writing in an email reply or on the phone, their agreement to your letter, or negotiate variance to your summary or next steps within a few days of the meeting.

When the buyer does not make the meeting you set up to review the letter and goes radio-silent and does not respond to email or phone calls, there is little chance of an outcome and the deal should not be forecast or qualified until this occurs....don't hold your breathe.

I have been using meeting summaries since I first started selling - (a long time ago) and adding this simple statement has made them much more powerful.

The structure of the Meeting Summary letter I use is as follows;

Situation - an intro summary of the buyers current environment and frames the issues you want to discuss.

Goal(s) -  the problem/sub-optimal condition the buyer is trying to overcome

Complication/issues - this is buyer pain in all its forms

Resolution - expressed as relevant Win-Themes in your offerings you believe will help alleviate the problem/s

Confirmation and next-steps,- the following phrase is the key "please confirm you are in agreement with my summary of our meeting"

The letter should close the buyer with a commitment to a phone-call to review the letter and discuss any variance or next steps.

Summary and Take-aways

1. Read the book Customer Centric Selling, you can order it here.
2. Use a Meeting Summary after every meaningful meeting with a buyer to confirm qualification and next steps...this could mean you write quite a few in a large transaction, so you need well written proformas loaded in your CRM tool that you can customize.
   
3. The meeting summary, if well written can serve as a selling vehicle for you inside the buying organization.
4. The meeting summary is particularly useful in overcoming weak mentors in the MENTOR phase of the IMPACT buying process and gaining access to a champion or decision makers.
5. Death and taxes are the only certainties in life, and this is not fool-proof, but if you implement Qualification Confirmation in addition to your current process, it will improve successful outcomes of forecast deals and improve forecasting accuracy.

Join Advanced Marketing Concepts Group on LinkedIn for free tools and downloads. 

The Role of Sales and Marketing Consultants in Start-ups

In the past couple of months I have met with four entrepreneurs, all highly passionate about their products and excited with the potential for them in the market.

The only problem being, they were all out of cash, having exhausted their savings and angel funding (in each case in excess of US $250K) developing their product and none of them had any paying customers, nor could they define their ideal customer or how they were going to market and sell the product. 

I felt for each of these entrepreneurs, but also felt a sense of déjà-vu as the founders spoke passionately about their product and their particular opportunity. I've been here before in a Berkeley spin-out; a video codec start-up that ran out of Angel funding and crashed (did I mention the product didn't work) and know that it doesn't have to be this way.

Steve Blank in his recent post, consultants don't pivot, founders do, stated that entrepreneurs can shoot themselves in the foot when they use consultants at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

The premise is that start-ups exist for founders to discover a scalable and repeatable business model, through a customer development process to get first hand feedback from customers on the product and business model hypothesis...and to iterate or pivot though this process until it is discovered.

Blank asserts that a consultant is at arms-length from the founder and unless entrepreneurs themselves leave the building and meet real prospective customers to get first-hand feedback, it's unlikely they will heed consultants advice in time to react - as their passion for the product creates selective listening.

I considered Steve's points and concur, with a couple of provisos.

1.     Consultants can help entrepreneurs in start-ups who are trying to create and sell new technology and who are unfamiliar with lean startup methodology, by suggesting they join the Lean-Startup-Circle on Google, imploring them to read Steve Blank's and Eric Ries' writings and blogs on the subject and to impress upon them the link between the customer discovery and validation process and the likelihood of finding a business model that will lead to success.

2.     Consultants can certainly join a startup as co-founders if they believe in the product potential and can get enough of a stake in the company, where the founder will be compelled to listen and take action on their advice....but this would take them out of the consulting role as the customer discovery process and company building is not a part-time job.

3. When the startup is in limbo, burning cash, with a poor model and weak sales. We see this one regularly when the start-up is entering a new market with new technology....see the four different market entry strategies. The problem here is two-fold and consultants can help in developing the correct sales culture and skills to match the way customer buy in the following situations;

• The investor and founder expectations for rapid ramp-up fail to materialize because the early adopter market is risk averse, deals take longer to close and customers need to be sold in a value-created (consultative) way.
• While the founders led the first 20 or so early sales, the sales pro's recruited to sell the novel product fail to achieve success, despite swapping out multiple sales VP's. The problem in selling novel technology in a new market, is that while a sales person may have a great track record selling in a value-added way (e.g ex Salesforce.com), this success does not translate into sales to early adopters who need to be sold in a value-created way (consultatively).

There is no argument that consultants can help accelerate the success of a startup once the founder has found a product/market fit.

In our experience, where  consulting contributes most value is in the transition from customer discovery, where where the entrepreneur having discovering a scalable business model moves to company building. Engagements that created value were;

• helping companies discover their competitive DNA and creating clarity in Website messaging and in 1:1 sales conversations, through aligning sales and marketing messaging,
• in helping refine target market focus and in positioning the products in the market through a Messaging Architecture
• in helping the sales team engage buyers around their issues and differentiate their value.
• In creating tools and lightweight and repeatable selling process  that matches the buying behavior and risk profile of their customers
• In implementing Inbound Marketing for lead generation and nurturing, where marketing and sales have been less than  successful in PPC and cold calling to generate leads.

Advanced Marketing Concepts is relocating our base of operation to the Bay Area of San Francisco in Summer 2010.

 

A Guide to Creating Engaging Powerpoint Sales Presentations

Recently I posted a question on a LinkedIn forum eliciting ideas for best-practices in PowerPoint presentations for an upcoming client project.

This was as a result of reading Seth Godin's blog-post on "PowerPoint makes us stupid - these bullets can kill", which led to an older post entitled Really Bad PowerPoint.

I didn't get much of a response to my request for ideas on PowerPoint best-practices, so I did some research of my own and came up with my own idea of what a best practices PowerPoint sales presentation should look like.

The following ideas combine to form the structure of my best-practices PowerPoint sales presentation and if you like it, please leave a comment and share it with friends. If you dont like it, I'm interested in why not.

1. I used MindManager from Mindjet to create the mind-map and story-board and highly recommend this extremely useful tool to create new ideas either individually or collaboratively.

2. I used the 4-MAT system developed by Bernice McCarthy for presenting the information in a way that is proven to create understanding for all learning preferences.

• 4-MAT is powerful for conveying new ideas in training, presentation environments and in teaching all ages and we use it to present our Selling in the Internet Age training and ELearning materials
• If you are not using 4-MAT for your presentations, then I recommend you investigate this method. (If you find anything better, please leave a comment)
  
• 4-Mat caters for left and right brain thinkers and answers the How, When Why and What-if questions in a logical order to engage, inform, extend and refine conceptual understanding.

3. The PowerPoint uses the Buyer Persona from the Buyer Relevant Messaging and Messaging Architecture to engage the buyer around their issues. This creates PowerPoint sales presentations consistent with the Website message and with the conversations sales people are having with buyers.

4. The salesperson expresses an opinion very early in the I.M.P.A.C.T buying cycle to initiate the buyer-seller engagement and create opportunity in a Value-created Selling (consultative selling) approach. 

5. In this approach we do not present the relevant product features and capabilities of our solution until we have created emotional engagement. 

6. If you can't tell your story in under 20 slides then you have work to do to create clarity and distill your message. Try to remember slides are visual aids, not a crutch; we are not training, we are selling. It's up to the presenter to know the script and to bring the images and story to life. A great presenter engages the buyer emotionally at the outset through expressing an informed opinion and asking questions and brings them on the journey as you relate your solution.

7. Remember Seth's rules, pictures convey emotions and engage the imagination, bullets can kill.